A spy! her mind shrieked. I mustThe scribe raised her hands to cast a spell. As she began reciting her prayer, Arvin manifested a power. He was already inside her mind, which made it easier, but in order for his deception to work he needed to manifest two powers at once.
He peeled back her layers of memory, starting with the sound she was currently hearing: the tinkling noise that was his power's secondary manifestation. Working backward from there, he erased the moment of realization that he was a not yuan-ti, but human-a spy-and the memory of his scales disappearing and human features emerging. At the same time, he remanifested his metamorphosis, restoring his body to serpent form.
In the middle of his mental labors. the scribe's spell went off and a snakelike whip of glowing red energy lashed out from her hand. It slapped across his shoulder, burning through the fabric of his shirt and sending a hot wave of pain through the flesh below. Arvin gasped, fighting to maintain his concentration. For a moment, it almost slipped away-scales stopped blossoming on his body, and the scribe managed to lay down another layer of memory: an image of Arvin as he shuddered under her mystic lash.
Then he regained control. He stripped this memory away, together with several others, peeling her memories down to the point just before his metamorphosis had ended, leaving her with the memory of him ordering her to take him to Sibyl. At the same time, he completed his transformation, forcing his body back into yuan-ti form.
When it was over, he was no longer listening to
her thoughts, but he could guess what they were. She would wonder why he was suddenly panting and sweaty, why he was turning his shoulder away from her, as if hiding something.
"You're… unwell?" she asked, her voice uncertain.
"Uneasy," he corrected. "The dream left me… uneasy. It is sure to unsettle Si-Mistress Sibyl-as well. The sooner I describe it to her, the better." He waved a hand, as if dismissing her. "Take me to her now. I will follow."
"Yes, High Serphidian," she said.
Laying down her quill and parchment, she slid off the bench and slithered up the hallway. Arvin followed, shifting the strap of his backpack to cover the bright red stripe of burned flesh on his shoulder.
She led him for some distance through the catacombs along a route so convoluted Arvin became lost. He doubted he'd be able to find the dreaming chamber again, then laughed grimly as he realized that it probably wouldn't matter. He'd accepted the fact that killing Sibyl would probably be the last thing he ever did. With Karrell gone, his own life no longer mattered. What he needed to focus on was making sure the attack was successful.
After a while, the bone decorations were replaced by bare stone walls that had been carved in a pattern that resembled scales. Arvin's heart quickened as he realized they were approaching Sibyl's lair. Villim's text had described Varae's temple as having walls like these. Several times the scribe led Arvin through arches that had arcane symbols graven into their stonework. Arvin's skin tingled as he passed through their magical fields. Though his heart raced each time he felt the wash of magical energy, no alarm sounded. Karrell's ring protected him, shielding his thoughts and suppressing any
auras that might have given him away as an enemy of Sibyl.
The ancient temple, a veritable stronghold, was crowded with yuan-ti. The scribe led Arvin past an egg-filled brood chamber that was warmed by crackling braziers and a great hall in which dozens of yuan-ti feasted on an enormous millipede whose head and tail had been staked to either end of a long dining table. The diners tore out chunks of the still-wriggling insect, and washed it down with blood-tinged wine.
Along the way, they passed several guards: grotesque, hulking blends of human and reptile that bore an unsettling resemblance to the hideous creature Arvin's best friend Naulg had become, after being forced to drink the Pox's transformative poison. Arvin gave a mental shudder as he passed them and had to work hard to keep his expression neutral.
Eventually they came to a chapel in which clerics coiled in reverent prayer before a statue, carved from gold-veined black marble, of a winged serpent with four arms and enormous rubies for eyes.
A statue of Sibyl.
One of the clerics turned to watch Arvin and the scribe as they passed-then hurried out of the chapel to clap a hand on Arvin's shoulder-his burned shoulder. With an effort, Arvin prevented himself from wincing. A sheen of acidic sweat broke out on his face.
"Where are you going?" the cleric hissed.
The cobra hood that surrounded his otherwise human looking face flared as he spoke. A forked red tongue flickered out of his mouth, tasting the air next to Arvin's cheek.
Arvin knew that his morphed body would smell as yuan-ti as the real thing, yet he was hard-pressed to damp down the unease he felt. The yuan-ti was a
cleric, a serphidian of Sseth, and a powerful one, judging by the elaborate cape he wore. The scales sewn onto the garment had been fashioned of fingernail- thin slivers of precious gems, which glittered in the lanternlight that filled the corridor. The cleric would know dozens of spells, perhaps one powerful enough to strip Arvin of his disguise.
"We are going to the altar room," the scribe answered. "This one dreamed of the Circled Serpent. I am taking him to the mistress."
"The Se'sehen are arriving," the cleric said. "The mistress is busy welcoming them." He turned to Arvin. "Your dream can wait."
"That's true," Arvin said, shrugging his backpack off his shoulders, "but this can't."
As he spoke, he manifested a power that would allow him to falsify one of the cleric's senses-in this case, the sense of sight. The cleric was a difficult subject. Arvin had to force his way into the man's mind with a mental shove that he worried might give him away. The cleric shook his head, as if trying to clear his ears of an annoying ringing.
As Arvin opened his pack, allowing the cleric to inspect its contents, he shaped what the other man saw. The pack actually held a net Arvin had spent the past three months weaving from yellow musk creeper vines-a net ensorcelled with the ability to entangle its victim upon a spoken command-but what the cleric "saw" as he opened the pack was something entirely different:
A gleaming half-circle of silver.
Half of the Circled Serpent.
Arvin closed the pack and withdrew from the man's mind. When he looked up, the high serphidian had an eager look on his face.
Arvin could guess what the man was thinking- that he, rather than a lowly scribe, should be the one
to deliver the Circled Serpent half to Sibyl. He was probably also weighing his chances of overpowering Arvin and taking the backpack from him. The cleric glanced at the distinctive ridges above Arvin's eyes then looked away, obviously deciding not to take on an opponent whose venom was more potent than his own.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"Sithis," Arvin answered, giving a common yuanti name-one that was much more pronounceable with a forked tongue. "I'm one of Ssarmn's men," he added.
He waited, tense, wondering if his ploy would work. Ssarmn was the slaver from Skullport who had supplied Sibyl with the potion that would have turned the humans of Hlondeth into her slaves, had Arvin not thwarted her plan. That had been a year ago, but with luck-Arvin resisted the urge to touch the crystal at his neck-Ssarmn was still involved in Sibyl's operation.
"Ah," the high serphidian hissed. He waved the scribe away. "You may leave," he ordered. "Return to the dreaming chamber."
"But-"
The protest died on her lips at the look the high serphidian gave her. Cowed, she turned back the way she had come, but not without taking a good, long. quizzical look at Arvin's burned shoulder, revealed since he'd removed his pack. Arvin tried to manifest the power that would erase that glimpse from her memory, but before he could she had slithered out of range.